The Dreaded F! Final Exams Are a Must-Win Battle?

Japanese students already spend almost 66% of their days in school (compared to 50% for Americans), and now Mr. Handa wants to take summer away? His reasoning is sound, at least, and those unable to score well on the final exam are surely the ones in need of summer school the most (to which Nanasama agrees). My worry would be that his pressuring for his grand fast-track class may lead to pushing students beyond their limits (in a bad way). Of course, it’s not like anyone’s in the class who isn’t suited for it, right? Well, unless they’re there just to be near someone…

Nanakko knows all about taking ones time and going at ones own pace. She believes everything will simply “work out”, so long as Nana studies hard. She concerns over Nana getting only four hours of sleep, which leaves me wondering how much sleep Nanakko gets. I could imagine she sleeping in all the time, but she’s always at the table for breakfast each morning. Maybe she catches up on extra sleep later in the day (such as seen at the start of this episode. She does always carry a pillow around, whose name has been revealed: Billy). Even more strange, one morning she’s awake and dressed before the other Nanas wake up, although a morning prior she continued to sleep when the other Nanas were up early.

It’s good to see the other Nanas handling cooking, cleaning, and other chores so Nana could get more studying in. Never mind that it takes a schedule of four hours of sleep and 10 hours of study in hopes of saving ones summer to get them to help out, but at least it’s a start.

The Nanas’ personalities really stand out as they try to do the house chores (and the faces on Nanappe and Nanapon are priceless in the scene where Nana first runs in). Leave it to Nanappe to overload the clotheswasher to save time, and only Nanapon would think the machine was possessed. Is it really that hard to stop the machine and take some clothes out? Also, previously Nanapon was shown having hung clothes up to dry. Didn’t she know anything about using the washing machine? (I’m still trying to figure how Grandpa’s undershorts flung at Nana—was the washer lid randomly opening and tossing an article of clothing out? Maybe it was possessed.)

As for Nanacchi, you’d think she’d know not to mix chemicals. At least she still keeps almost a smile on her face when flees the chemical fumes, and gets lectured afterwares.

I can easily see Nanarin dropping dishes upon seeing a roach, but Nanasama as well? Nana had no trouble taking care of the roach, but all the other Nanas were frightened. So, why wasn’t Nana? Did seeing the others’ reactions give her more confidence? I think she was just fed up with them. And it only gets worse from there.

The Nanas really need to determine who’s good at what and partition the jobs accordingly. Cleaning the floors? Nanappe’s too energetic for that (unless she’s under hypnotism, of course). Was that Nanasama with Nanacchi trying to hang clothes to dry in outside on such a windy day? Might want to leave hanging clothes up to Nanapon from now on. For the meal scene, I take it Nanacchi spent all their money on anything and everything that looked good, resulting in an empty wallet and far too much food. (This brings up an interesting question: who funds the Nanas’ meals? Does Grandpa have a lot of money? Certainly if Nana’s parents were sending money, it would only be enough for one Nana.)

The scene were Nana is barely awake when leaving for school, and Nanakko stops her, had me a bit confused. We see Nanappe sleeping on the bed in her red pajamas, with Nanapon (in light purple) sleeping beside the bed. Sleeping on the ground at the end of the bed is a Nanasama (in her green pajamas). On the ground in yellow is Nanacchi, a leg sticking out off her mat. Nanarin (yellow-green pajamas) is missing, and Nanakko (in orange) is standing at the doorway. Now, Nanarin can be elsewhere, that’s not the confusing part. When Nana trips over Nanacchi’s leg, and Nanakko catches Nana, Nana drops her bookbag on the face of an unsuspecting, happy-faced…Nanappe? It’s dropped on a Nana in red pajamas, even though Nanappe is over on the bed, and Nana just tripped over Nanacchi, and dropped her bookbag on someone who sleeps with a happy face. Also, Nana reaches right over above where Nanacchi was seen to get her bookbag. All right, so it’s not so confusing after viewing it a couple of times, but it had me going at first to see the red pajamas on Nanacchi when she was just wearing yellow!

Now, who can’t relate with Nana, studying all hours of the day, and into the night, and barely getting any sleep? (Those homeschooled need not reply!) I can’t imagine if I had to go through that in middle school, though, but I surely can relate with repeatedly beginning to fall asleep in class due to having been up late studying.

The bully trio appear once again! Okay, I realize they’ve been in just about every episode so far, but they get so little time, and I think they were absent in the last episode. This time around, they seem quite enamored by the idea of summer school. If Nana were gullible, she might just believe them, and enjoy the thought of summer school. It must be nice to be in a class with such low expectations that you pass all the tests without too much trouble and never have summer school. This isn’t to say the trio don’t do any work, of course. The three work as a study group, as seen in episode six.

Someone else who gets little screen time is Kamichika, but when he does get some lines, he sure knows how to make them count. The exams, he says, are simply a review of what was taught thus far. If a student keeps up with review of what they learn, then there should be no problem scoring at least a passing grade on tests and exams. Even though, Kamichika does make sure he reviews his notes extra the night before the exam—or does he always review until he falls asleep at his desk at night?

When Nana’s schedule drops to two hours of sleep a night, I’m surprised Grandpa didn’t know about it. Does he even watch over the Nanas to make sure they’re safe, and not, say, sleeping only two hours, or overloading washing machines, or mixing chemicals? When there was only one Nana, did he ever watch over her, or do they simply live in the same home while he spends time tinkering with his inventions?

The Nanas getting after Nanakko for changing Nana’s alarm clock for extra sleep made for good material. Nanakko simply wanted Nana to sleep more, but Nana scolds her for it. Even Nanarin and Nanapon tell her they all feel Nanakko must not care about Nana and their summer. This is the first time we see one of the Nanas feel she isn’t in sync with the others, and that she might not be the same as them after all. Grandpa might not interfere a lot, but at least he’s there to talk with when there’s a problem. (We also learn that Nanakko always has Billy with her, as Grandpa is surprised to see her without Billy. Nanakko’s had Billy ever since her mother sent it in the package back in episode one.) His explanation of how the Nanas share the same feelings, but act upon them different based on their personalities, almost makes me want to look back on previous episodes with this information.

The recording Nanakko put in Billy must have taken a bit of time. It’s one thing to simply read off work from the school books, but Nanakko may have also made she sure knew the material enough to not relate information in the wrong way. While all the other Nanas tried helping out around the house, Nanakko put a lot of effort into helping out, herself. I’m hesitant to say she put the most effort in, as each Nana has their own take on how they’re helping out, and I’m as skeptical of Nana (who chewed out Nanakko, saying one can’t learn listening to a recording playing while sleeping), but it’s the thought that counts.

On a cultural note, when Nanacchi jokes that something may have happened to Nanakko, the position she holds her arms and hands in is a posture and motion used by Japanese to refer to one being a ghost. This is seen commonly in anime.